G-8 summit isolates US on climate change

As Bush pushes for voluntary measures, other members endorse goal of halving greenhouse emissions by 2050.

By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
and Mariah Blake | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 8, 2007 edition

Page 1 of 2

Boston and Hamburg, Germany - – What has emerged from this week's G-8 summit about the issue of global warming is one of the most explicit agreements to disagree that has appeared in a final communiqué.

This is some analysts' assessment after leaders of the world's eight most-powerful economies issued their joint statement Thursday.

Despite strong pushback from the Bush administration, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had warned that she would brook no watered-down words on climate change when this year's summit ended. It appears that Mrs. Merkel, the chair of this year's meeting, has held true to her word.

In the communiqué, the European Union, Japan, and Canada set a goal of reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases from cars, factories, and power plants by 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. This implicitly accepts the notion that countries should reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases – mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels – to levels that hold the increase in global average temperatures to about 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F.) over preindustrial levels.

"The most substantial achievement is that these nations will very seriously consider decreasing greenhouse gases by 50 percent by 2050. This is not yet a final decision, but the ambition has been quantified, which is much more than we had hoped for. The door toward a major commitment is now fully open," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Merkel's chief environmental adviser.

But the White House walked away with several of its presummit positions intact, notes Alex Lennon, codirector of the climate project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. It commits only to considering "seriously" the emissions target and timetable that the EU, Japan, and Canada say they will strive for. The White House also saw its emphasis on long-term action retained, at the expense of proposed language that included short-term goals for improving energy efficiency.

In addition, the G-8 welcomed a US offer to host talks later this year among the 15 largest greenhouse-gas emitters to work toward a new climate-change agreement that would take over after 2012, when the first five-year commitment period ends under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

"This is a least-common-denominator process," Dr. Lennon says. "My reading of the communiqué is that the US is leading the process. It looks much more like the proposal President Bush announced last Thursday than it does the European objectives beforehand."

Page 1 | 2 | Next Page